Stress is turning up more and more as a contributor to health problems of all kinds, including anxiety and depression. The problem isn’t so much the worst traumas, such as the death of loved ones, divorce, or losing your job. It’s also the constant stress arising from pressures at work, the burden of debt, living in deeply troubled relationships - conditions that can stay with us for years and years.
There’s an impressive list of studies linking long-term stress to many illnesses. Neurochemicals released by stress responses can damage the production of immune system cells and contribute to autoimmune diseases, like lupus. They can contribute to heart disease, arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. Most important here they’re related closely to anxiety and depression.
Living with daily stress keeps the hormones circulating that are meant to protect us from immediate, temporary threats. The surge of adrenalin and cortisol, as well as dozens of neurochemical reactions, turn down some body functions and turn up those the body needs for instantaneous flight or fight responses.
Recurrent and chronic depression keeps that stress reaction going, and the continuing flow of the stress chemicals can damage many systems in the body. In particular, brain areas that help regenerate nerve cells can die off, contributing to the limitations on mental functioning that depression brings on. It’s a vicious circle in which stress and depression feed into each other. Breaking that cycle can go a long way to helping us heal.
The research on stress is creating a much more complicated picture of depression that we usually hear about. The illness isn’t caused solely by reduced levels of serotonin and a couple of other neurotransmitters. There are hundreds of neurochemical interactions related to stress, among other factors, that also influence the course of depression. That may be why today’s antidepressants often relieve only a few symptoms, leaving others that increase the risk for recurring episodes.
The medications are important and effective for many who take them, but depression seems to be related to external stresses in life as well as internal neurotransmitter deficits in the brain. So reducing those external sources of stress can also help limit the intensity of depression.
Yet changing the conditions we live with is easier said than done. Major change is not feasible for most people. You can’t just quit your job, get out of debt, take the stress out of relationships or feel secure when it’s hard to make ends meet. For a lot of people, especially in a down economy, there are no other jobs, no way to enhance income, to reduce pressures at work or to lessen the strain of caring for a chronically ill family member. You have to make the best of what you’re living with right now.
Even if you do have some flexibility in the outward conditions of your life, depression is hard at work stifling your energy, motivation and ability to cope. You may think so poorly of yourself when under the controlling influence of depressed thinking that you believe you could never get a better job. Or you may feel so overwhelmed that attempting a community college program to learn new skills for a different kind of work would be too much to handle. Depression can also put you at a disadvantage in dealing with abusive relationships. You might blame yourself rather than see what’s really going on. The connection between stress and depression also means that basic systems in your body, including your resistance to disease, are running down at the same time that you feel overwhelmed emotionally and mentally.
